The Motherf**ker with the Hat Delivers Raw Emotion

By Melody Udell in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 8, 2013 5:00PM

John Ortiz (Jackie) and Gary Perez (Julio) in The Motherfucker with the Hat. Photo credit: Michael Brosilow.

Jackie (John Ortiz) is one motherf**king angry dude. Fresh out of a two-year prison stint and struggling with every kind of addiction, he comes home to find a strange man’s hat in the apartment he shares with his on-again, off-again girlfriend since the eighth grade, Veronica (Sandra Delgado). Outraged, he seeks advice from Ralph (Jimmy Smits) his AA sponsor, a man who — in Jackie's eyes — has risen out of the sludge of addiction and straightened up his life; yoga and nutritional shakes are now his drugs of choice. But the more Ralph dispenses his zen-like advice and Jackie tries to avoid violating parole, the more the underlying motives creep out, until, in Jackie's words "Nobody knows nobody."

With this fall's production of the gritty, poverty-focused Good People and now with The Motherf**ker with the Hat, it's clear that Steppenwolf is veering into a new kind of playgoing — one a little bit younger, a little more urban and a lot more profane. The profanity is no surprise, it's clearly given away in the title. But it puntuates playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis's dialogue with a smooth, vehement cadence — there's no mistaking the anger, hurt and betrayal these characters feel onstage.

Smits (NYPD Blue, anyone?) is a commanding presence, and as his character's credibility devolves from sage-like advisor to just another self-righteous "AA asshole," it's clear that that Ralph is no longer the chewy moral center that the show seem hinged on. And neither are Veronica and Jackie, whose volatile relationship is so fraught with mistrust and infidelity, it seems they might've only been happy during their coke-head youths — a depressing realization, for sure.

We never truly learn who these characters are, only who they think they are; the audience is fed tiny crumbs, then left to draw their own conclusions. In a truly touching moment, Jackie's painfully lonely cousin, Julio (Gary Perez) reflects on how Jackie slipped away from the cool kids to hang with Julio — a rare moment of sentiment in a show rife with pain and violence.

The Steppenwolf's production has employed many of the same people that brought the show to Broadway in 2011 for its five-month run, including director Anna D. Shapiro. Scenic designer Todd Rosenthal earned a Tony nom for his work on the Broadway production, and he brings his impressive work to the Steppenwolf — the stage flips, spins and turns into one of three very different apartments with what seemed like ease.

At times, the plot is a little too slow-moving for its own good, despite tense scenes of near or actual violence. But for every nuanced performance (from all five talented cast members), The Motherf**ker becomes a little bogged down with the heft of its own raw emotion, with the significance of everyday people struggling with bad decisions and even worse dependencies. Yet in the end, "Nobody knows nobody." Not even themselves.